In response to a CNNMoney inquiry, the company said Susan Mauldin is retiring as chief security officer and Dave Webb is retiring as chief information officer.

A LinkedIn profile for Susan M. says she’s served in the CSO role since 2013. She previously worked at First Data Corporation, Sun Trust Banks and HP. She studied music in college and earned her MFA from the University of Georgia.

Webb joined Equifax in 2010, according to his company bio. He previously served as chief operations officer at Silicon Valley Bank and as a vice president at Goldman Sachs. Before earning his MBA, Webb earned a bachelor’s degree in Russian from the University of London.

◆ We are enduring the hardest test of our lifetime for national-disaster response efforts.

Huge Hurricanes Back-to-Back and a Third Looming

The number of elderly in South Florida only compounds the potential tragedy.

Comment:So far, I have been impressed by

The high quality of weather forecasts, often 4-5 days out

The learning by federal, state, and local authorities after Katrina

The much-greater competence of authorities in Texas than in Louisiana, in Houston than in NOLA, and in FEMA today than under Bush. (Granted, being more competent than NOLA officials is a very low bar.)

The exceptional contributions by volunteers in Texas. Here’s hoping for the same in Florida.

The absence of looting and other predation after Harvey. (Again, a welcome improvement over Katrina.)

Here’s hoping the worst weather forecasts don’t come true for Florida, the response is as effective as in Texas, and that the long-term recovery effort lets people rebuild their lives.

◆The hack of Equifax computers records is the most massive to date

It exposes sensitive personal data on 44% of the US population.

To compound the injury, several executives seem to have sold the company’s stock before the hack was publicly disclosed.

Saying that the Obama administration’s approach to policing campus sexual assault had “failed too many students,” Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said on Thursday that her administration would rewrite the rules in an effort to protect both the victims of sexual assault and the accused.

Ms. DeVos did not say what changes she had in mind. But in a strongly worded speech, she made clear she believed that in an effort to protect victims, the previous administration had gone too far and forced colleges to adopt procedures that sometimes deprived accused students of their rights. –New York Times

Comment: The problem is their headline: “Betsy DeVos Says She Will Rewrite Rules on Campus Sex Assault”

She plans to rewrite the rules on allegations of campus sex assault.

The key word is “allegation.” That word is missing from the NYT headline.

The victims deserve thorough, fair investigations, with appropriately harsh penalties for sexual harassment and coercion when those have been proven. At the same time, the accused deserve through, fair investigations and a chance to present their side. The whole point of due process is to sort through the allegations.

◆ FIRE, the leading supporter of free speech on campus, uses this headline:

Forbes reports IBM is struggling in the area, competing against Google, Microsoft, and Facebook.

The lab will focus on areas like training AI algorithms that don’t require extensive supervision and exhaustive manual labeling of data. Right now, many deep learning systems require people to go through and label each piece of data — like, say, that’s a car in the image.

In hardware, the lab hopes to move beyond what’s popular in AI today — namely, graphics processors usually made by Nvidia — and start experimenting with processors that don’t rely on traditional chip designs, such as quantum computing, an area IBM has already been pursuing. –Forbes

Comment: This is another example of how US leadership in basic research in the physical and biological sciences pays off for the larger US economy. A glance at Kendall Square (next to MIT) and Silicon Valley’s close connection to Stanford reinforce this critical point.

While the Humanities sink into political advocacy, second-rate ideology, and irrelevance to most serious students, the sciences and empirical social sciences continue to advance.

The criminals had access to information that could allow them to create or take over accounts for many of the people impacted since they have names, addresses, birth dates, social security numbers and “in some cases” drivers license numbers. –Engadget

Now, Bloomberg is reporting

Three Equifax Inc. senior executives sold shares worth almost $1.8 million in the days after the company discovered a security breach that may have compromised information on about 143 million U.S. consumers.

Marisa Salcines, a spokeswoman for the Atlanta-based company, didn’t immediately return a call for comment.–Bloomberg

Comment: Confer Desi Arnaz

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